Fjord: On the Surface of Moral Uncertainty
CANNES, May 2026
By Burcu Beaufort
Palme d’Or laureate Cristian Mungiu’s return to Cannes with Fjord (2026), starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, has made his mark in film history. By taking home the festival's highest honor once again, the Romanian auteur becomes one of ten directors to have won the prestigious Palme d’Or a second time.
In Fjord, Mihai, a Romanian software engineer played by Stan, moves with his Norwegian wife Lisbet, portrayed by Reinsve, and their children to the remote Norwegian village where Lisbet grew up. Drawn by both Mihai’s new IT job and the area’s strong Christian community, the deeply conservative family initially receives a warm welcome from their neighbors and the local school staff.
The situation changes dramatically after teachers notice bruises and marks on their eldest daughter Ella (Vanessa Ceban). Following questioning by Norwegian child protection and police, the children are placed into provisional care while the parents face accusations due to their strict disciplinary methods. As the investigation unfolds, tensions grow between the family and the surrounding institutions, exposing cultural differences, language barriers, and the bias against them as Romanian migrants.
The ambiguity is clearly part of the film’s intention, but it does not always fully carry through, with key narrative threads left hanging or only partially developed, such as the children’s boat trip the day before the bruises are discovered.
The emotional fallout feels equally thin. After being separated from their parents, the teenagers appear completely unshaken, showing almost no confusion or psychological distress. Hiding Renate Reinsve behind those black-framed glasses comes at a similar cost. She’s an actor who usually communicates a great deal through micro-expressions, and in Fjord this is largely muted.
Mungiu’s Fjord ultimately offers merely the outline of something more layered. It remains conceptually ambitious, but the tension between the conservative family dynamic and the surrounding institutional judgment never quite develops.